Post-World War II Anarchism

New blog entry for WW II and post-war writings by Herbert Read, Marie Louise Berneri, Paul Goodman, David Wieck, Daniel Guérin, Alex Comfort and the Noir et Rouge group that played a part in the resurgence in anarchist ideas and action that surprised many people in the 1960s.

I've created a new page on my blog, "The Emergence of the New Anarchism," which includes writings by Herbert Read, Marie Louise Berneri, Paul Goodman, David Wieck, Daniel Guérin, Alex Comfort and the Noir et Rouge group from 1944 to 1958 that I was unable to fit into Volume Two of Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas. I think all of these writers played a part in the resurgence in anarchist ideas and action that surprised many people in the 1960s. Much of what they wrote is surprisingly topical today: http://robertgraham.wordpress.com/the-emergence-of-the-...hism/.

For those of a more theoretical bent, I have recently posted part of an essay by Eduardo Colombo, "The State as Paradigm of Power," from 1984, where Colombo uses Castoriadis' post-Socialism or Barbarism theory in support of an anarchist critique of state power (too esoteric for Volume Three I'm afraid): http://robertgraham.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/eduardo-co...1984/.

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On May 30, 2014 we will be celebrating 200 years of Mikhail Bakunin (1814 – 1876), a famous activist of the Russian and international revolutionary movement, a social thinker and one of the founders of the international anarchist movement. [Français] [Русский]

Black Cat Press is pleased to announce the publication of "Revolution" by Carlo Cafiero for the first time ever in English (indeed nor has it ever been published as a complete volume in the original Italian!). The book brings what is certainly Cafiero's most complete, original work to English-speaking audiences for the first time. It is also an extremely important work in that it is one of the earliest attempts at compiling a complete theoretical view of the revolutionary ideal of anarchist communism. [Italiano] [Nederlands]

I’ve just come back from visiting the Kate Sharpley Library in California. Things have changed from the days when I could get there on the bus and we were buying our first filing cabinet. Lots of filing cabinets now, as well as boxes like the Left Bank Books archive. It’s good to look at the non-fiction shelves, seeing ‘old friends’ and new acquisitions.

Narratives of anarchist and syndicalist history during the era of the first globalization and imperialism (1870-1930) have overwhelmingly been constructed around a Western European tradition centered on discrete national cases. This parochial perspective typically ignores transnational connections and the contemporaneous existence of large and influential libertarian movements in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. Yet anarchism and syndicalism, from their very inception at the First International, were conceived and developed as international movements. By focusing on the neglected cases of the colonial and postcolonial world, this volume underscores the worldwide dimension of these movements and their centrality in anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles. Drawing on in-depth historical analyses of the ideology, structure, and praxis of anarchism/syndicalism, it also provides fresh perspectives and lessons for those interested in understanding their resurgence today.

The Nestor Makhno Archive has now been updated, with the addition of over 70 new documents in Arabic, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, English, French, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Macedonian, Russian, Spanish and Ukrainian.

There are recent histories of the First International researched from anarchist perspectives, which balance the dominant Marxist narrative. Both sides had their strengths and weaknesses, but overall the anarchists had the better program.

In this part I will expose some basic historical information about the anarchist political organization model and in the end, make a comparison between these experiences and the nowadays mission of the political organization that intends to be the catalyst of a Democratic Confederalist social change. [Italiano]

We do not see Bakunin as a god who never made mistakes. Of course he was not perfect. was a man, but a man who gave his all for the struggle of the oppressed, a revolutionary hero who deserves our admiration and respect. “From Bakunin, we can learn much about revolutionary activism. We can learn even more about the ideas needed to win the age-old fight between exploiter and exploited, between worker and peasant, on the one hand, and boss and ruler on the other. The greatest honor we can do his memory is to fight today and always for human freedom and workers liberation.”

This article, excerpted from a talk by Lucien van der Walt, co-author of Black Flame: the revolutionary class politics of anarchism and syndicalism, covers key elements of anarchist and syndicalist history, including its role in Asia, Africa and Latin America, its impact on unions and anti-colonial struggles, and its historical centrality.